By J. Hughey (Guest Blogger)
I don’t really feel like blogging today so I’m telling myself how writing can be cathartic. The thing bothering me is something you’ll relate to. How do I know? I’m pretty sure you’ve lived through your own teenage angst, plus you may be lucky enough to relive it with your kids, like I am right now.
My husband and I just had a blowout
with our seventeen-year-old son about a curfew he chose to ignore
without bothering to text or call. Overall, we are very fortunate
parents—no addictions, felonies, or pregnancies so far—but we do
expect our kids to toe the line, especially when we are the ones
providing the car, the smart phone, and all the usual fun teens
expect.
From his point of view, thirty-five
minutes after midnight is not so very late. And his mapping program
lied to him. And he had an emotional friend to deal with before his
departure. And it’s illegal to text and drive. What’s the big
deal anyway, Mom?
I get it. I remember those days and I’m
sure all of you do, too. Just like back then, I can’t wait for this
phase to be over.
Reliving the cusp-of-adulthood angst
has infiltrated my writing, sometimes rearing its head as a complete
obstacle, like today. Other times, I’m writing it into my
characters in Yellowblown™, my New Adult contemporary romance
series that follows a college sophomore through the upheaval an
eruption of the Yellowstone volcano causes across North America. Not
only is she trying to get a life, she is dealt a really crappy set of
circumstances that retract her options rather than expanding them at
the moment she is contemplating independence. Moving home puts her
back into the role of a child while outside forces give her new
responsibilities and worries.
A big challenge with parenting—and
writing—is keeping the personality you are dealing with in mind.
Hubbie and I know our son. We know he is always going to push the
envelope, like the old adage if we give an inch he will take a
mile. So, we aren’t giving an inch on issues we especially want
to manage, with the hope of getting him through his senior year of
high school relatively unscathed. As for Violet Perch, my
nineteen-year-old lead character in Eruption, I’ve struggled
to show her age-appropriate angst without creating a young woman no
one wants to spend five minutes with much less two hundred pages.
Teenage angst sucks, and as readers, we
don’t want to be aggravated by protagonists the way real people,
whether they be our children, other relatives, or the mouthy teen in
the discount store can do. A book, we can set aside. Real people, not
so much.
How to survive the teen years, both
fictional and factual? Shine a light on the positive. I manage this
better in my writing than my parenting, I’m afraid. Right now I’m
trying to figure out how to break through the wall my son erected at
the announcement of his punishment whereas my heroine reacts the way
I tell her to so far.
Any words of wisdom for surviving the
senior year of high school? A family friend said, “Stick to your
guns, but continue to love him.” That seems pretty good, but I’m
open to help.
I’m in the middle of the perfect
college semester, hundreds of miles from Mom, with an awesome roomie
and my freshman crush finally becoming a sophomore reality—Hotness!
I’m figuring out calculus, I’ve got both hands on the handlebars
and the wind of freedom in my hair. What on earth could slow my roll?
How about if the Yellowstone volcano
erupts for the first time in 630,000 years, spewing a continuous load
of ash (crap) all over North America? Think that’ll put a kink in
my bicycle chain?
Make that kinks, plural, because
here’s a scientific fact I’ll bet you didn’t know. Nothing
ruins the perfect semester like a super caldera. Now that I’ve made
you smarter today, maybe you can tell me how to keep my life cruising
in the right direction—no to Mom, yes to roomie, double yes to
Hotness!—during a global disaster?
My lame name is Violet and, in the
interest of full disclosure, I’m not hanging from the side of a
cinder cone on the last page of this trauma, but there’s definitely
more to come. Unless, of course, humans become extinct and then
there’s not. Duh.
Enjoy an excerpt from the day the
eruption starts, September 13:
“You’re starting to freak me out,”
I said. Boone looked like he was going to tell me someone had died,
but he didn’t know anyone in my family, and surely the Dean of
Students would not give him the responsibility of passing on bad news
after three weeks of talking.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t
decide if I’m freaked out or not.” He took a deep breath.
“Yellowstone is erupting.”
I stared at him, not a flicker of
comprehension illuminating my dim-bulb mind. Nothing. “Yellowstone?
The place with the, umm, geysers?” Obviously I’d heard of
Yellowstone, never been there, not sure I could place it on a map in
the murky part of the U.S. between where I lived and Hollywood.
“Yeah. Yellowstone sits over a
hotspot that’s been around for millions of years.”
“Instead of steaming it’s now
erupting? As in lava erupting?” We’d covered igneous rocks in a
very general way already so I knew hot liquefied rock below the
ground was called magma and, when it erupted, became lava.
“Dr. Potter says nobody knows what
it’s doing. It blew this morning. I mean explosively blew. All the
local sensors went offline. Satellite pictures show a big brown cloud
of dust. Like two hundred miles across.”
Boone’s voice shook a fraction. I put
my hand on his forearm. He sat back so he could hold it in his.
I asked, “Do you have friends out
there, or family?”
“Not close. Dr. Potter knows I’m
from Nebraska. He asked me where—made me point to it on a map. He
said my family might want to stockpile supplies, or better yet,
leave.” He paused, prompting me to scoot to the edge of my seat.
“My house is nine hundred miles away from Yellowstone, Violet.”
“Are you serious?”
“He says if it does anything close to
what it’s done in the past, thirty percent of the U.S. is pretty
well screwed.”
I rifled through my bag to find my
tablet. “Show me,” I said. “I need to see a map or something.”
“C’mon,” he said. He took me to
Dr. Potter’s office. The professor ignored us. He jabbed his finger
at his cell phone to enter a text message. The screen of his laptop
glowed with a cascade of open program windows, and his iPad bonged
with an incoming email tone. His finger did not pause when Boone led
me to an ancient roller-shade map of the US.
“Yellowstone is here. Dr. Potter drew
this red circle this morning.”
That’s not coming off any time
soon, I thought as I studied the thick line of scarlet Sharpie.
“The last eruption basically
obliterated everything within this oval.”
“When?”
“Six hundred thirty thousand years
ago,” Dr. Potter muttered. His trendy rectangular glasses sat askew
on his nose. He swept his hand toward his laptop’s screen in a
disgusted now-look-what-you’ve done gesture. I circled around his
desk to see images more current than the one offered by the
cartographic fossil on the wall.
A dark mess of chocolate pudding
plopped in the midst of the whipped topping clouds of a satellite
loop. The mass burgeoned over the northwestern U.S., dry pudding mix
edges caught and swept east by the prevailing winds.
Anyone with a grandpa who blares
Weather Watcher on the TV all day knows weather moves east.
Apparently, crap shot into the air by
Yellowstone moves east, too.
****
Eruption: Yellowblown™ Book One
is offered at the special introductory price of 99 cents for a short
time, so grab your copy now.
http://www.amazon.com/Eruption-YellowblownTM-Book-J-Hughey-ebook/dp/B00MRHAIRO
If you’d like a chance to win some
Yellowblown™ swag made with a series logo and Eruption cover
charm, sign up for J. Hughey’s newsletter at
www.jillhughey.com/contact.
About J. Hughey
J. Hughey knows what a girl wants.
Independence. One or two no-matter-what-happens friends. A smokin’
hot romance. A basic understanding of geological concepts. Huh? Okay,
maybe not every girl is into geology, but J. Hughey is, and in
the Yellowblown™ series she combines her passion for a timeless
love story with her interest in geeky stuff to help Violet Perch get
a life, despite an ongoing global catastrophe.
J. Hughey also writes historical
romance as Jill Hughey.
Website: www.jillhughey.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/jillhugheyromance
Twitter: @jillhughey
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2 comments:
Hello, Jill,
I really like the premise of this book. And yes, it's hard enough to be a teen, even without an apocalyptic disaster interfering!
Thanks for being my guest!
Thanks for sharing my exciting news on Beyond Romance, Lisabet.
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